Looking up into the face of her benefactor, she saw her own mirrored faceplate reflected back at her, and a smaller reflection in that, dwindling all the way to some vague, not too distant vanishing point. Behind the hooded mirror, faintly visible, was a suggestion of a young man’s face. Cheekbones, caught sharply in the light. Slowly, but unmistakably, he shook his head.
Almost as soon as this realisation had dawned, Rashmika was on her own again. The Observer moved around to the side of the shaft where the ladder was and slipped nimbly over the side and then down. Still catching her breath after the shock of nearly falling, Rashmika moved sluggishly to the edge, arriving just in time to see the Observer operate some lever-driven mechanism that brought the trapdoor down. Once snugly in its frame, the door twisted through ninety degrees.
She was on her own again.
Rashmika stood up, shaky on her feet. She felt foolish and irresponsible. How careless she had been to allow herself to be saved by one of the pilgrims. And how unwise to assume that they did not perceive her at all. It was obvious now, crushingly so7 They had always been aware of her but had simply chosen to ignore her as best they could. When, finally, she had done something that could not be ignored—something idiotic, it had to be said—they had intervened quickly and sternly, the way adults did around children. She had been put right without reprimand or caution, but the sense of indignity remained. Rashmika had little experience with rebuke, and the sensation was both novel and unpleasant.
Something snapped in her then. She knelt down on the armoured trapdoor and pounded it with her fists. She wanted the Observer to come back up and make some explanation for why he had shaken his head. She wanted him to apologise, to make her feel as if she had done nothing wrong by spying on their ritual. She wanted him to purge her guilt, to take it upon himself. She wanted absolution.
She kept knocking on the door, but nothing happened. The caravan rumbled on. The racked Observers maintained their tireless scrutiny of Haldora. Finally, humbled and humiliated, feeling even more foolish than she had when the man had saved her, Rashmika stood up and went back across the roof of the machine to her own part of the caravan. Inside her helmet she cried at her own weakness, wondering why she had ever imagined she had the strength or courage to see her quest through to the end.
“Do you believe in coincidences?” asked the swimmer.
“I don’t know,” Vasko said. He stood at a window in the High Conch, a hundred metres above the grid of night-time streets. His hands were laced neatly behind his back, his booted feet set slightly apart, his spine straight. He had heard that there was to be a meeting here, and that he would not be prevented from attending. No one had explained why it was taking place in the conch structure rather than the supposedly more secure environment of the ship.
He looked out beyond the land to the ribbon of water between the shore and the dark spire of the ship. The Juggler activity had not lessened, but there was, strangely, a swathe of calm water reaching out into the bay like a tongue. The shapes festered on either side of it, but between them the water had the smooth cast of molten metal. The moving lanterns of boats meandered away from land, navigating that strip. They were sailing in the direction of the ship, strung out in a ragged, bobbing procession. It was as if the Jugglers were giving them clear passage.
“Rumours spread fast,” the swimmer said. “You’ve heard, haven’t you?”
“About Clavain and the girl?”
“Not just that. The ship. They say it’s started to come alive again. The neutrino detectors—you know about those?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “They’re registering a surge in the engine cores. After twenty-three years, they’re warming. The ship’s thinking about leaving.”
“No one told it to.”
“No one has to. It’s got a mind of its own. Question is, are we better off being on it when it leaves, or halfway around Ararat? We know there’s a battle going on up there now, even if we didn’t all believe that woman’s story at first.”
“Not much doubt about it now,” Vasko said, “and the Jugglers seem to have made up their minds as well. They’re letting those people reach the ship. They want them to reach safety.”
“Maybe they just don’t want them to drown,” the swimmer said. “Maybe they’re simply humouring whatever decision we make. Maybe none of it matters to them.”
Her name was Pellerin and he knew her from the earlier meeting aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity. She was a tall woman with the usual swimmer’s build. She had a handsome, strong-boned face with a high brow, and her hair was slicked back and glossy with perfumed oils, as if she had just emerged from the sea. What he took at first glance to be freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were in fact pale-green fungal markings. Swimmers had to keep an eye on those mark-ings. They indicated that the sea was taking a liking to them, invading them, breaking down the barriers between vastly different organisms. Sooner or later, it was said, the sea would snatch them as a prize, dissolving them into the Pattern Juggler matrix.
Swimmers made much of that. They liked to play on the risks they took each time they entered the ocean, especially when they were senior swimmers like Pellerin.
“It’s quite possible they do want them to make it to safety,” Vasko said, “Why don’t you swim and find out for yourselves?”
“We never swim when it’s like this.”
Vasko laughed. “Like this? It’s never been like this, Pellerin.”
“We don’t swim when the Jugglers are so agitated,” she said. “They’re not predictable, like one of your scraping machines. We’ve lost swimmers before, especially when they’ve been wild, like they are now.”
“I’d have thought the circumstances outweighed the risks,” he said. “But then what do I know? I just work in the food factories.”
“If you were a swimmer, Malinin, you’d certainly know better than to swim on a night like this.”
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“Meaning what?”
He thought of the sacrifice that had been made today. The scale of that gesture was still too large for him to take in. He had begun to map it, to comprehend some of its essential vast-ness, but there were still moments when abysses opened before him, reaching into unsuspected depths of courage and selflessness. He did not think a lifetime would be enough to diminish what he had experienced in the iceberg.
Clavain’s death would always be there, like a piece of shrapnel buried inside him, its sharp foreign presence felt with every breath.
“Meaning,” he said, “that if I were more concerned about my own wellbeing than the security of Ararat… then, yes, I might have second thoughts about swimming.”
“You insolent little prick, Malinin. You have no idea.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, with sudden venom, “I have every idea. What I witnessed today is something you can thank God you didn’t have to experience. I know what it means to be brave, Pellerin. I know what it means and I wish I didn’t.”
“I heard it was Clavain who was the brave one,” she said.
“Did I say otherwise?”
“You make it sound as if it was you.”
“I was there,” he said. “That was enough.”
There was a forced calm in her voice. “I’ll forgive you this, Malinin. I know you all went though something awful out there. It must have messed with your mind pretty badly. But I’ve seen my two best friends drown before my eyes. I’ve watched another two dissolve into the sea and I’ve seen six end up in the psychiatric camp, where they spend their days drooling and scratching marks on to the walls with the blood from their fingertips. One of them was my lover. Her name is Shizuko. I visit her there now and when she looks at me she just laughs and goes back to her drawings. I have about as much personal significance for her as the weather.” Pellerin’s eyes flashed wide. “So don’t give me a lecture about bravery, all right? We’ve all seen things we’d sooner forget.”